


End of the Hall

by Luddleston



Series: Ferelden University: Part One [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, College AU, Drunk Sex, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Modern AU, Roommates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-24 09:30:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4914244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luddleston/pseuds/Luddleston
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Krem is but a lowly freshman at the biggest university in Ferelden, and his roommate is older, wiser, and <i>fucking huge</i>.</p><p>But hey, if he had to get stuck with an enormous Qunari roommate, at least he got stuck with the one who has pink polka-dot sheets and wears cat shirts every Monday. </p><p>Krem's going to succeed at this college thing. He has goals. Aspirations. And thirst. So much thirst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Get Lost at Parties

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an ongoing college AU that I've been headcanoning wildly about with some friends. If you want to know all the things about it, I would gladly tell you them. This is probably going to be a three-shot, but it might have more/sequels. 
> 
> Rating will eventually go up.

When Krem was assigned to a triple his Freshman year of college, he’d expected two normal roommates. What he got was one roommate, who looked like the result of a semi truck crashing into a brick wall and the whole thing being covered in concrete. 

He had _horns_ , for fuck’s sake. 

Krem had seen Qunari before. He definitely had. Once. From a distance. And they looked much bigger up close, in a dorm room, telling him that he was getting the bottom bunk, because there was no way he could get on the top one without breaking the whole thing.

“Obviously,” was all he could think to reply. He dropped the bag he was holding. It was louder than he’d expected it to be. 

“You do know you’re staring, right?” 

“Right! I mean. Sorry.” Krem busied himself with unpacking, which mostly consisted of him stuffing things in drawers, and his roommate (whose name was the Iron Bull, what the actual hell) did the same. 

They were silent for a while, until Bull started making his bed. “Dude. What are those supposed to be?” Krem asked, eyeballing the Bull’s pink polka-dot sheets. 

“Well, they’re bedsheets. Pretty sure they have those in Tevinter.” Oh, great, now they’ve gotten to race jabs, and Krem’s probably offended him, and he began to wonder what it would take for him to get a room change. 

“I know, I just don’t think I’ve seen any so pink. I mean. Outside of my little sister’s room.” Here, Krem cursed his brain’s default reaction to conflict, which could be summed up as “snark at it until it goes away.” 

Not a good life choice. 

“I like pink,” was all Bull said, shrugging his massive shoulders. Krem was pretty sure each one of them was wider than his whole body. When Bull moved away from the bed, Krem put his (normal, gray, not pink) sheets on his bed. Someone was shouting in the hallway, and Krem hoped desperately that wouldn’t continue for the remainder of the year. He knew this was supposedly the party hall, but it was the only one that didn’t have communal bathrooms, and. Yeah. He wasn’t going to do the communal bathroom thing. Not about to risk foot fungus or coming out to everybody on his unit. 

Really, though, it was mostly the fungus. Nasty shit. 

Bull cracked the door open and stuck his head out sideways, so he wouldn’t knock the horns. He joined in on the shouting. Great. Krem was going to get a sore throat if he was expected to join in on this behavior. What did college guys even _do?_

Bull stuck his head back in the room while Krem was trying to figure out an organizational system for his bookshelf. “Hey! Some of the guys are having a thing tonight. It’s at a frat house, but,” he shook his head. “Gonna be some good people, good booze. You in?” 

It would have been great if Krem’s brain did something other than grind to a stuttering halt, but alas, he ended up staring at Bull for a solid minute. Booze. People. He was being invited to a party. With his giant, semi-truck-brick-wall-hybrid roommate. He wanted to say no, but this was a part of his life goals for college. Socialize. Make people not hate him. Maybe get a girlfriend. Not fail out. His goals may not have been lofty, but they were fucking terrifying. 

“Yeah. Sure, I’ll go,” he said, glancing down at the shirt and basketball shorts he’d just been wearing the nine hour (count ‘em. Nine.) drive from Tevinter. “Maybe I should change.”

“I think you look fine,” Bull said, giving him a once-over. 

“I don’t feel fine,” he said, digging a fresh T-shirt and some jeans out of the drawer he’d stuffed them into. He wandered into the bathroom to change, thankful that Bull didn’t seem to think that was weird. When he was in the bathroom, he almost laughed, because Bull’s towel was the same shade of pink as his sheets. 

He felt cleaner in new clothes, even though his hair was kind of a mess, and not the hot kind. When he left the bathroom, Bull had changed too, and was now wearing a wide-necked tank top with a cat screen-printed on the front. The cat was wearing sunglasses.

“Will you be offended if I ask what you’re wearing?” Krem asked, making eye contact with the cat, not the Bull. 

“Nah. Takes more than that to offend me,” Bull said, scrubbing a hand through Krem’s hair, which made it even _worse_ , and now he was going to have to wear a hat, wasn’t he? “I like this one, though,” he said, picking at the hem of the shirt. “Love cats.” 

“I bet you could fit like, five of them in one hand,” Krem said, pulling his favorite gray beanie out of his backpack, where he’d packed it especially so he could find it. He looked like a hipster, and gave no shits. “Maybe six.”

Bull seemed delighted at the idea of fitting a dozen cats in his huge palms, and laughed about it all the way out the door. Krem was a little startled by the sight of campus at night, since it had been daylight when he walked in the doors. The buildings were beautiful, newer than the ones in his neighborhood in Tevinter, but he was certain he was going to get lost on the first day of classes. He pushed that out of his mind; there was still a Sunday stretching between now and his first class. 

“So, the house is off-campus,” Bull said. “I mean, there _are_ frat houses on, but this one isn’t. You wanna drive?”

“I don’t have a car,” Krem said. 

Bull shook his head. “No, I mean _I’ll_ drive. If you don’t feel like walking.” 

It was an idea. If Bull drove, though, he’d be stuck at the party as long as Bull wanted to stay. “Nah, let’s just walk,” he said. 

“Cool.” 

The neighborhood near campus was night, but obviously student housing. Most of the houses needed a coat of paint, and there were three or four cars in driveways meant for two. They passed a house with a tire swing, and apparently Bull knew someone who lived there, because he grabbed the tire and tucked it up between two high branches, assuring Krem that, “Sera’s gonna think it’s hilarious.”

Krem could tell what house they were looking for before they got there, because it was the only one with people hanging out on the front lawn, listening to pop music blasting over speakers and littering the yard with beer cans. He’d never been to a party like this in high school. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing, so he stuck close to Bull as his roommate ducked through the front door. 

The party didn’t look like the ones he’d seen in movies (and wasn’t that sad; the only thing he knew about parties came from Mean Girls). The music was loud, but no one was dancing, and there was a haze of unidentifiable smoke that made things hard to see. People were everywhere, sitting in groups on the floor, and there had to be at least three girls piled up in that armchair together. Everyone seemed to know each other. Bull was greeted by a dwarf with a big nose and a bigger mustache, and Krem didn’t realize they were talking to him until Bull patted him on the shoulder. 

“What?” 

“I asked if you wanted a drink,” Bull said, pulling him out of the main walkway before a guy wearing the frat’s letters on a T-shirt ran him over. 

“Yeah. A drink would be great.” 

He followed Bull to the kitchen, where there were a total of three coolers sitting at the base of the counter island. An array of bottles was laid out on the counter, with stacks of cups and a few sharpies. “What do you like?” Bull asked. 

Krem didn’t drink. He was an oldest child, saddled with the strictest rules and he hadn’t had wild enough friends in high school to ever try sneaking to parties behind his parents’ backs. He was cool with hanging out in his room, blasting music and drinking cherry Coke. Looking back on it, his high school life was lame. 

“I have no idea what any of this is,” he said, all in one breath, and Bull laughed jovially and clapped him on the back. 

“No worries, you’re with a frat party booze expert,” he said, mixing a drink and looking a little like some kind of alchemist. Or, you know, an actual bartender. “Try this,” he said, handing Krem a drink that was bright orange. 

He took a sip and made a face. _”Fuck,_ this is sweet,” he said, setting it on the counter. 

“Oh, you’re not a fan?” Bull said. He didn’t look offended, just kind of surprised. “I’ll drink it, then.” He knocked half of it back before Krem could blink. 

“How are you doing that? It’s like, pure sugar, dude,” Krem said. 

“I _like_ pure sugar. You can go ahead and drink beer like all the other frat boys, but I’ll take mixed drinks ’til the day bartenders stop putting tiny umbrellas and maraschino cherries in ‘em.” He tugged a dark bottle out of one of the coolers. “Try this. You’ll probably like it better.” 

Bull was right—he did like the beer. It was bitter, but no more so than black coffee (which, coincidentally, he was bordering on addiction to). Bull finished the rest of the mixed drink and made himself another one, this time, with a lot more vodka. And a curly straw. 

Before Krem had finished a third of his beer, Bull was dragged into the living room by an elf with tattoos who either _was_ Dalish, or was _named_ Dalish. Krem watched him lumber off after her, and nodded when Bull told him it would just be a few minutes. He felt like it would be more than a few minutes. 

Krem hung out in the kitchen, checking his phone every so often so he didn’t look like he was some kind of lonely person with no friends who only knew the guy he’d been arbitrarily roomed with. Even if he was. A few people filtered in and out, mostly to grab drinks and leave. He made his way through another of the same beers while he hung out. When a group of people came in and started shouting about how jealous they were that one of them had a class with Prof Mahariel, he decided to leave. He grabbed another beer before he returned to the living room, cracking it open and tucking the bottle cap in his back pocket. No sense in adding to the trashing of the already-messy frat house. 

The living room had a door that led to some kind of walled-in back patio, which looked cozier and less crowded than the place he was awkwardly standing now. Better to awkwardly stand where no one could bump into him. 

The first thing he noticed was that the couch was occupied. Probably by multiple people. It was hard to tell, because the only light came from strings of those tiny paper lamps hung across the ceiling. He took a free seat, taking a drink of his beer. Someone came in behind him and shut the door, and the pounding music from the living room was muffled to the dull pulse of a bass line. With the music softened and his eyes adjusting, he suddenly realized what was going on with the whole couch situation. There was moaning involved. Moaning in a voice he recognized, which was weird. 

Bull was half-sitting, half-laying on the couch, and there was a girl wrapped around him. Krem could only see her legs and one of her arms from where he was, and he momentarily panicked, wondering if he should leave. Bull moved before Krem could, shifting so the girl was on top of him, and _damn,_ she was gorgeous. Dark skin and darker hair, gold jewelry glinting in the low light, and so many curves that the mini-dress she was wearing did absolutely nothing to hide. Bull’s _hands_ were under that dress. They’d see him if he moved now.

Krem’s mouth went dry, but his brain failed to register that he was holding a drink. His fingers tightened around the bottleneck and he glanced at the rest of the room, where no one seemed to care that Bull was making out with a girl. A pair of elven girls were sharing one chair, both of them laughing at something that was on one of their phones, and there was a group of three people drinking and sitting on the windowsill. 

He may not have known much about party etiquette, but he knew he shouldn’t be _watching_ Bull and this girl. Maybe it was the drinks or the social anxiety, but he didn’t look away. The girl had one hand around Bull’s horn, and she was giggling, but it was muffled by the whole “someone’s mouth on her mouth” thing. She started rolling her hips, like they were going to _fuck_ , or something, and Bull just _grabbed her ass_. Krem wished he could do that. Hot girls weren’t into his whole thing, though. 

He glanced down at his phone, trying to distract himself, but looked back up just in time to see Bull’s face buried in the girl’s tits. Were they seriously going to have sex here? Was that a thing? Wasn’t this the part where someone was supposed to yell at them to get a room? The girl leaned down to whisper something in Bull’s ear, and he laughed, low and from his chest, and. Well. That was kind of sexy. Krem crossed his legs and finally made the beer-mouth connection again. 

“…But I’ve got to go check on someone.” 

Bull was talking. 

“Who?”

“Brought somebody with me.” 

About him?

“Oh, really?”

“My roommate.”

About him.

“Ask him to join,” the girl said, leaning in to kiss Bull again, and he did that chest-chuckle thing again and Krem’s brain may have short-circuited a little. He was not okay with being turned on by his roommate. Not even a little. 

“Nah, I really do have to check on him. Hope he still isn’t in the kitchen.” 

He wasn’t still in the kitchen. No, he was sitting here, like a fucking creeper, watching them dry-humping on the couch. And there was no way he could pretend he wasn’t being a creeper, because there was no plausible reason he could be hanging out in here without having noticed them, because Bull was huge and horny—no, he _had horns,_ he mentally corrected himself. Maybe if he sat really still, no one would notice him. It was a stupid thing to think, because as soon as Bull and the girl disentangled themselves, and she adjusted her skirt and her hair, Bull noticed him. 

“Krem?” 

“I swear to fuck I’m not being weird.”

Bull blinked at him for a moment, then smiled. It was a sweet expression, all things considered. “How many of those have you had?” he asked, waving his hand at Krem’s beer. 

“This is my third,” Krem said, frowning at it. “I’m not drunk.”

“Nah, but you’re a little tipsy,” Bull said. “You doing alright?” 

Bull had lipstick on his jaw, and Krem wasn’t sure whether he wanted to kiss that jaw, or the lips that had left the mark there. The lady in question seemed bemused by Krem’s general existence, and she kissed Bull on the cheek once before leaving. He had to bend down so she could. Krem was pretty sure she squeezed Bull’s ass on her way back to the living room. 

“Let’s head back to the dorm, little guy,” Bull said, one sturdy hand on Krem’s shoulder. It was warm through his T-shirt. Could’ve done without the nickname, though. 

Bull waited for Krem to finish his beer, making small talk with a guy in the kitchen who looked like one of the frat boys. Krem kept looking at the lipstick mark, which was still there. At one point, Bull shifted in a way that he probably thought was subtle, but wasn’t really, considering Krem was staring at him. He was definitely adjusting his junk, though, and Krem was grossed out, but not wholly. He still made an effort to finish his beer quickly, and added the bottle to the growing collection next to the sink. 

They walked back to the school in relative quiet. Neither of them spoke, but there were parties going on at a bunch of the houses on this street, so silence would be hard to come by. The background party noises didn’t make this any less of an awkward silence, though. 

“You must think I’m so weird,” Krem said. It may not have been the right thing to break the quiet, but it was _something_ , and he needed something right now. 

“Not really,” Bull said. That had to be a lie. There was no way. “I think you’re socially awkward, yeah, not weird, though.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Mmhm. Shouldn’t’ve left you there on your own. Could tell you weren’t used to this kinda thing.” 

“Well I’m _not.”_

Bull stopped, grabbed Krem’s shoulder again. Why were his hands so huge? “Listen. I can tell you’re getting in your own head about this, and I’m telling you to stop.”

“It’s not like I was watching _you,_ so don’t—“

“You don’t need to make excuses.” 

“I really wasn’t!” Krem was frustrated now. Did this guy think he was gay, or something? Because no. He’d probably regret having this conversation on the sidewalk in the middle of Greek Row on the first weekend of the semester, but whatever. It was happening. Bull made it happen. “I’m not into dudes, dude!” 

“Oh.” One of Bull’s ears flicked, which was weird. Krem guessed Qunari could do that, but he’d never thought about it concretely. “Well, I am.” 

“What? Then what about that girl? The one with the…” he trailed off, waving his hand uselessly. “Boobs,” his brain supplied, but he wasn’t tipsy enough to say that. 

“Listen, Krem. I know you know enough about this shit to realize that there’s more to sexuality than just gay and straight. I’ve seen your bookshelf.” 

“So, you’re bi?” Krem dug his thumb into an itch under the bottom edge of his binder. He kind of hoped Bull didn’t notice, but, all things considered, Bull probably knew. 

“Pansexual, actually, but…” Bull started walking again. Krem had to jog a few paces to catch up with him. Damn his short legs. “I don’t know if I want to have this conversation now. Explaining sexuality and the Qun is…tough.” 

“You’re one of those Qun guys?” Krem had honestly thought he was one of the others ones. Tal-vasomething. Bull only nodded. 

Back to awkward silence. Bull took his phone out of his pocket while he walked, answered a text or something. Or he was texting his friends about his roommate who was some kind of awkward homophobe. Not exactly the kind of impression Krem wanted to give to anyone, ever, much less the person he’d be living with for a year. 

“Isabela thinks you’re cute, by the way.” 

“Who?” 

“Isabela. The girl I was…” and he lifted his hands, like he was going to start gesturing about something, so Krem cut him off before he could. 

“Got it. And really?” 

“Yeah, just texted me. She wants me to introduce you.” Bull actually showed him the text, which actually read, _”Your roommate looks like the kind of guy who could handle himself in a dark room with me, if you know what I mean.”_ and Krem did not know what she meant, but he was weirdly happy that this Isabela person knew he was a guy. “I can, by the way. Introduce you.” 

“Sure. Maybe sometime.” Krem decided to take that as a sign Bull didn’t hate him. 

Bull scanned them into the dorm when they got back, which was good, because Krem was a lowly Freshman who didn’t know which end was up on his ID yet. He didn’t know exactly what year Bull was. He seemed like he knew the entire school backwards and forward, so maybe a junior? But why would a junior be living in Freshman housing? 

Krem ducked in the bathroom for a shower as soon as they got back, which made his head feel clearer and gave him a minute to go over the mix of awkwardness and terror that had been his day. Bull wasn’t totally horrible, though. Actually, he wasn’t horrible at all. Krem could have gotten roomed with some fraternity pledge who called him a _girl_ , or something. Bull may have been intimidating, but Krem wasn’t scared of him. 

He toweled off and had to deal with the absolutely fucking _obnoxious_ struggle of putting a binder on while he was slightly damp. He’d done it before, and every time, he made it his goal not to do it again. But he wasn’t letting Bull see him without it. That would be like… seeing him naked. Not ready for that. 

Apparently he was the only one not ready for that, because when he opened the door, Bull was shirtless. He was just laying on the futon, reading, but he was definitely shirtless and buffer than Krem would ever be able to be in his life. Damn him. Krem brushed his teeth, and tried to not watch Bull’s shirtless reflection in the mirror. Bull wasn’t cut, really, but he looked strong, like he could tear someone in half if they pissed him off. All Krem could do if someone pissed him off was shout at them, and then his voice always cracked. 

Sleep. Sleep would be good. Maybe then, he’d wake up and magically not be able to remember that he’d watched his roommate feel up a girl and then had the literal most awkward conversation of his life. Seriously. Coming out to his dad hadn’t been this bad. 

“You wearing that to bed?” 

Krem paused mid-ladder climb, and glanced down (down!) at Bull. “What?” He was just in a T-shirt and shorts. 

“Your binder. You shouldn’t wear that to bed, right?” 

“I know what I’m doing,” Krem said, but Bull was right, and he’d never worn it to bed before, but he intended to take it off once Bull was asleep. Again: too naked. 

“Do you, now?” Bull’s eyebrows were going to reach his horns if he kept raising them like that. 

“Fuck. I should take it off,” Krem sighed, hopping down from the ladder and walking toward the bathroom. Maybe someday, he’d get to a point where he wasn’t weird about changing in front of people. Bull probably wasn’t. He’d seemed pretty chill with Krem seeing his boner (or maybe he just didn’t notice), and with being half-naked in their room, so, all things considered, Krem was going to have to put up with a naked roommate at some point. 

He was not proud of how fast he jumped into bed after, but Bull didn’t even look up from his book, so he felt pretty safe. 

———

Krem wanted to sleep in on his last day of freedom, but there was someone knocking on his door. Rude. He groaned and shoved his pillow over his head. The whole bed shook when Bull got up (Krem hoped he didn’t roll around in his sleep. That would be shitty), and light flooded through the doorway when he opened it. 

Bull was talking to the person out the door, but Krem didn’t listen. It sounded like a girl, probably some other hot girl who came by to talk to Bull about things hot girls talk to Bull about. Sex, probably. 

The door shut, and Krem settled back down, ready to spend the rest of the day sleeping, until Bull poked him in the shoulder. 

“What?” Krem snapped, glaring at him, and Bull took a few steps back. 

“Shit, didn’t realize you weren’t a morning person. Anyway, Vivienne wants our whole floor to go to dinner together tonight. She came by to tell us.” 

Vivienne was the RA, Krem was pretty sure. That sounded like her name. She was terrifying, really tall and constantly looked like she was judging someone, and Krem was not about to break any rules if he knew she would be the one bringing justice upon him. “Why now? It’s morning,” Krem groaned, re-burying himself. 

“It’s noon,” Bull said, “I’ve been up for hours.” 

“Well _excuse_ me for not getting out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn. Now get out of the room so I can put my tits away.” 

Bull actually looked surprised at the outpouring of snark, but he left anyway. Morning Krem was to be feared, because Morning Krem had no filters. He washed his face and got dressed before Bull came back in, dragging a grumpy-looking elf and a girl who had been at the party last night with him. 

There were people. In his room. And he was still not coherent. He hadn’t dug his coffeemaker out of the box of miscellaneous stuff in the corner of the room yet, and he was running on sass alone. 

“Krem, this is Dalish and Skinner,” Bull said. Skinner was the grumpy one. Dalish, he sort of remembered. She had green tattoos, which wasn’t easy to forget. 

“Hi Krem!” Dalish cheered, and hugged him. Krem started looking for his coffeemaker. 

By the time Krem had filled up his biggest mug (which was technically for soup or something, but anything was a coffee mug if you used it right), Dalish and Skinner were on the futon, on either side of Bull, the three of them arguing vehemently over whether Dalish was a mage. From what Krem gathered, she was, but she had claimed not to be on the school forms, so she wouldn’t have to take a Magical Studies minor. 

“Sit with us,” Dalish said, beckoning at him. “Tell us about yourself!” 

“People don’t like when you yell that at them,” Skinner said. 

“I’ll just… I mean, there’s not room on the futon,” Krem said, sitting on one of the rungs of the ladder. Dalish stood up and grabbed his arm, pulled him into the place she’d been sitting. She sat on Bull’s lap, stretching her legs over Krem’s. When she sat like that, kind of curled-up, her shorts barely covered inches of her thighs. He wasn’t sure where to put his hands, so he laid one of them on the arm of the futon and wedged the other in between his leg and Bull’s. 

“Where are you from?” Dalish asked, looking at him like his answer would solve all her problems. 

“Minrathous?” The answer came out as a question. 

“Ooh!” she squealed, and her toes wiggled in his lap. “That’s in Tevinter, isn’t it? I’ve never been there, but Skinner has, and—“

“And I hated it,” Skinner said. 

Bull patted her on the head. “Stop offending people, Skinner.” 

“I’m not offended,” Krem said. 

“See? He’s not offended.” 

Skinner and Dalish were nice, but… weird. They seemed to disagree on just about everything, but they did it in this strangely polite way. Krem also had no idea whether they were just friends, or something else. Dalish spent most of the conversation sprawled out over the group of them, eventually laying her head on Skinner’s lap, where she complained about how bony Skinner’s thighs were. Her legs were still all over Krem, and she prodded him with her feet to get his attention every now and then. Once, when she was laughing hysterically over a not-very-funny pun of Bull’s, she kicked him in the chest, which fucking _hurt._

“Stitches is texting you,” Skinner said at one point, handing Bull’s phone to him. 

“Ah, crap. I knew he wanted help moving furniture,” Bull said, shifting Dalish onto Skinner’s lap and standing. “Guess I have to go use my hugeness to help out pre-med students who can’t carry their own fridges.” 

Dalish announced that she was going to help, and Krem didn’t ask what kind of help she’d even be. She leapt of the futon, and Skinner stood and followed her. “Be back in a few hours,” Bull said over his shoulder, and Krem just nodded. 

Having the room to himself for a while was nice. He could organize all his stuff without fearing that he’d run smack into Bull every time he turned around. The room seemed strangely bigger without Bull taking it up floor to ceiling. As he thumbtacked a poster-sized map of Thedas to the wall, he ran through a mental list of ways to survive the semester. 

Don’t ever watch Bull while he’s kissing a girl again. Or while he’s kissing a boy. Whatever.   
Have A Talk about mornings. Capitals, because mornings are serious business.   
For the love of all that is holy, get Isabela’s number.


	2. Practice Makes Perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krem kisses Bull. Krem also kisses a girl. Krem is still thirsty.
> 
> **WARNING** A minor, non-canon character makes a transphobic slur at Krem in this chapter (and gets punched in the face immediately after). He also mistakes Krem for a girl. If you want to skip this part, stop reading right after Krem gets kissed, and pick back up at the single line, "That's when Krem punched him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PRACTICE KISSING IS MY FAVORITE TROPE, OKAY. 
> 
> (P.S. Next chapter, the rating is going up because THEY GON FUCK.)

Two weeks into the school year, Bull dragged Krem to another party with Dalish, Skinner, and Bull’s other friend Rocky. Krem was beginning to wonder if anyone in Bull’s friend group had a normal name that didn’t seem at least a little made-up. 

The party was at a house off-campus, the one with the tire swing, and Krem didn’t end up awkwardly standing in the kitchen at this one. Some other dude was taking that position; he was blond and kind of cute, but even more awkward than Krem, which was, by all accounts, kind of impressive. 

Skinner was trying to get Krem to try every kind of drink the party had to offer, and, against his better judgement, he accepted most of them. She was just too cute, and she always assured him that “this one is really good!” 

Half of them, he ended up disliking and handing off to Bull, who would drink pretty much anything, but he could stomach enough of them that he ended up pretty buzzed. The music was loud enough that he could feel it in his skull, and Bull had an arm around him. All things considered, it was weirdly comfortable. He didn’t feel like he’d get lost this time. 

Dalish pressed another drink in his hand, and this one, he actually liked. Bull was laughing at something Krem hadn’t heard. It was too hot, especially since Krem was wearing two layers and jeans, but everyone was sweaty, so he didn’t feel gross. It probably would have been cooler if he wasn’t against Bull, who radiated heat, but Krem was content where he was at. 

“We should dance!” Dalish shouted over the music, already bouncing to the beat and grabbing Skinner’s hand. 

“I’m a shit dancer,” Krem said, but he downed the rest of his drink, because he wasn’t going to be the lame one standing in the corner. 

“So is Skinner, Bull said, hauling his arm back from around Krem and making a path for the rest of them to get to the dance floor unencumbered. His bigness was useful sometimes. Dalish was still holding onto Skinner, but she grabbed Krem too, and made a little circle with the three of them.

He tried to copy what Dalish was doing, because she seemed to know what she was about, but the way she moved was just _impossible_ to imitate. She was like some kind of snake, but with arms and legs and green tattoos, and Krem knew that if he twirled like that, he’d look ridiculous, but when Dalish did it, it was kind of cute. 

“Where’d Bull go?” Krem asked, glancing over his shoulder. 

“WHAT?” Skinner shouted.

“I said _where did Bull go?”_

 _“WHAT?”_ it was Dalish this time. 

“Maker, forget it,” Krem mumbled, knowing they couldn’t hear, and he slipped off into the crowd to find Bull. An eight-foot Qunari should, by all logic, not be that hard to find.

He found Bull in the center of the room (no surprises there), dancing with a guy. Said dude looked small compared to Bull (also no surprises, the guy was huge), and he was an elf who could… move. Dirtily. There was no other way Krem’s intoxicated brain could describe it. Bull seemed to be having fun with the guy; he was laughing and Krem wondered what he was saying. He kind of wished he could hear it from where he stood. Elf dude had a tattoo on his cheekbone, and Bull traced it with his thumb at one point, which was a kind of cute gesture in the middle of full-on grinding. 

Bull had a cute smile. It was a little crooked. 

Krem rubbed his thumb at the scar on his eyebrow, wondering where Dalish and Skinner had gone, and whether he should go back and interrupt their…whatever they did without him. He wasn’t sure if they were just really close friends (like, _really_ close), or if they were a couple. They looked a little couple-y sometimes, but Krem had known straight girls in high school who would kiss each other and hold hands (he’d never understand straight girls). 

As he looked around for someone he knew (there had to be people from his classes here, right?), he felt a tap on his shoulder that was purposeful enough not to just be an accidental bump. “Hey,” Krem said, nearly yelling over the music. 

They guy who’d poked him was taller than him, like a vast majority of dudes, and he was kind of stubble-y and had dreads, which was sort of gross, considering he was _definitely_ white. “Hi,” dreads-dude replied, “you’re cute.” 

“O…kaaaay.” That was forward. Krem wasn’t used to forward. The most forward anyone had ever been to him was when a boy in the third grade sent him a note that said “want to be my girlfriend?” and then had check-boxes. He’d torn the note in half, because he thought boys were gross in the third grade, and he still kind of did, even though he was one. 

“Want to dance?” 

“Um, I sort of… I don’t really… dance,” Krem said, too quiet to be really heard at this distance, but he wasn’t making eye contact, and hoped the dude would back off. He watched Bull, hoped it was clear enough that he wasn’t into it. 

“We don’t have to!” Dreads said, and then he leaned over and Krem went from “casually weirded out” to “internally screaming,” because the creepy-ass white boy was _kissing_ him. 

Krem didn’t know what it was like to kiss someone who didn’t respond at all, partially because he’d only kissed one girl before (during a game of spin the bottle, and it lasted .001 seconds, approximately), but Dreads was definitely experiencing it. Krem was too startled to do something like back away, or slap him, so he just stood there, like some kind of zombie, and _HOLY FUCK THERE WAS A TONGUE IN HIS MOUTH._

He was startled into shoving the guy back, and stared at him like…well, like he’d just shoved his tongue somewhere it didn’t belong. “What the fuck!?” he was actually yelling now. It was more like screeching; his voice went all high, just like it always did when he yelled. This was why he didn’t yell. “I’m a guy! A straight guy!” Even if he didn’t sound like one. 

Dreads just laughed. “You’re a what?” 

“A GUY!” And there was the voice crack. Great. Just great. 

“You some kind of tranny?” 

That was when Krem punched him. It wasn’t the smartest idea; his knuckles burned afterward. In movies, when someone got punched, all the music cut out, but the bubbly pop song Krem didn’t know the words to kept going in the background, and only the people closest to them sort of noticed what was happening.

“What the fuck!?” Dreads shouted, and punched back. If Krem was faster, he could have dodged, but he caught it on his cheek. Two weeks into college, and he was already in a fight. His goal to make people not hate him? Out the window. 

Krem turned, trying to run, but there was a wall of people who were staring. Just staring. Watching the fight, not trying to break them up, not cheering anyone on, and they stopped him from leaving and gave Dreads a chance to grab Krem by the back of his shirt and pull him hard enough that he tripped and fell flat on his ass. 

Okay, Krem began to rationalize, it was the first semester and he was already getting beat up. Wouldn’t be the first time. Dreads was drunk enough to not aim his first kick, and he just hit the outside of Krem’s thigh, and the second one seemed like it would have been lined up somewhat better, were it not for Bull barreling into the circle. 

“Cut this shit out!” Bull yelled at Dreads. Dalish ducked in the gap that Bull made and hauled Krem to his feet. She was barely large enough to carry him, and he stumbled on his way up, but not being on this dirty floor was better than anything. 

Dreads was intoxicated enough to do something really stupid, and he punched Bull in the eye. Bull didn’t look like he’d been expecting it (which made sense, really; most people probably wouldn’t try clocking a guy as big as Bull), and he took the full impact of the punch. 

“Okay, that’s it,” Bull said, and the song had just ended in the background, so there was a second of silence before Bull shoved Dreads to the ground. Bull put his arm around Krem and steered him out the door, with Dalish trailing after, dragging an enraged Skinner. 

“Why the fuck did he hit you!?” Skinner yelled. “I’ll kick his ass! I’ll—I’ll—“ and Krem didn’t hear the rest of the threats, because his heart was pounding in his ears. Bull still had an arm around him, and later, he’d feel pitiful about curling in to Bull’s side the way he did, but for now, he felt safe pressed against Bull’s stupid neon tank top. 

Dalish was soothing Skinner, still keeping a tight hold on her so she didn’t run back in and kick ass. 

“You okay?” Bull asked him. 

“Define ‘okay’,” Krem said, and Bull squeezed him tighter. “I’m probably okay-er than you. You’re gonna have a black eye, man.” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Bull said. He looked back at the elves. “Dalish? We’re going back to our room,” he said, and Krem assumed she nodded or something, because Bull started walking, guiding Krem with him. 

Krem’s breathing was still shaky, and his chest hurt. “Sorry for ruining _another_ party,” he said. 

“You haven’t ruined any,” Bull replied. “First one was my bad, this one was that asshole’s own fault. I didn’t see what happened… you wanna tell me?” 

At first, he didn’t. It’d be like an admission that he wasn’t man enough to deal with his own problems, but Bull had already dealt with them, so it was only fair that he knew what he had just knocked some guy on the head for. Even if it was fucking embarrassing. 

“He kissed me,” Krem said. 

“Did he ask?” 

“Uh, fuck no, because I would have told him to get the fuck away. I told you, I’m straight. Straight-ish. Not into that guy. _And_ he thought I was a girl.” 

“What a dumbass,” Bull said, and he was rubbing Krem’s shoulder like he was comforting a kid, or… his girlfriend or something. Or boyfriend. Or something else, knowing Bull. “You ever need me to take someone out for that shit, you just say the word. I’ve got your back, man.” 

Krem snorted. “I wish I could just fight dudes off on my own, or that I didn’t get confused for a chick in the first place. But. That’s not happening.” 

“Well, I’ve never confused you for a chick,” Bull said, “and I’ll try and make sure nobody else does.”

Then, part because of drunkenness and part because of emotion, Krem hugged him, muttering a muffled “thanks” into Bull’s weirdly comfortable chest. Krem barely came up to Bull’s shoulders while he was on his tiptoes. Bull chuckled and patted him on the back, didn’t freeze up or say something along the lines of, “wow, Krem, you’re so weird, why are you doing this?” and Krem appreciated that more than anything. 

Bull kept his arm around Krem all the way back to the dorm. 

———

Krem had a date with a girl. An actual girl, with an actual really cute face, had asked _him_ if he wanted to go to a concert with her. Granted, it was an orchestra concert, and he knew next to nothing about orchestra, but he had a _date,_ and he didn’t care if he had to listen to Beethoven, as long as he got to hold Maryden’s hand. She was so cute, and she knew a ton about music (because she was a vocal performance major, so it was kind of required), and he could listen to her talk about timbre and key changes all day, even if he didn’t understand a word of it. 

Basically, he had a huge, gross crush, and Bull was hearing all about it, because Krem couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut.

“What do you think I’m supposed to wear to this thing?” he asked. “Is it like, a thing where you have to dress nice? Can I wear jeans?” 

“Don’t wear what you’re wearing,” Bull said, and Krem rolled his eyes, because he was wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt with a hole in the bottom hem. 

“Thanks. That’s _so_ helpful, Bull.” 

“Chill. Wear a button-up and maybe a tie—do you own a tie?” 

“I own a tie, Bull, what kind of dude do you think I am?” 

“Clearly, the kind who doesn’t own a tie.” 

Krem wasn’t all that formal; he owned exactly one tie, and it was black, because black matched with anything, or at least that was what his dad said when they bought it. He had a couple of different nice shirts, but he didn’t know if he should wear a dark color or not. Were you supposed to wear black to orchestra concerts? Or were you just supposed to wear black if you were _in_ an orchestra concert?

“You’re stressing a lot over this,” Bull said, and thanks again, Captain Obvious, of course he was stressing.

“I’ve never been on a real date before. I’ve never _kissed_ anyone before. Except that creepy dude. And one time, I kissed a girl but it didn’t count because it was sort of a dare, so I’ve pretty much never kissed a girl before, and holy shit, what if Maryden wants to kiss me?” Ah, yes, the rambling. That old nervous tic.

“Calm down,” Bull said, reaching out and taking Krem’s wrist. He was laying on the futon, watching Netflix. Krem stopped as soon as Bull spoke, color rushing to his face as he realized what he’d just done. 

“Sorry. I get kind of… ranty.” 

“’S fine,” Bull said. “You’ve never kissed anyone before?” He didn’t seem judgmental, or incredulous, just like he was asking an honest question, so Krem gave him an honest answer. 

“No.” 

“Okay. Would you be less nervous if you had?” Bull let go of his arm. 

“Probably, but in order to do that, I’d have to kiss Maryden, and that’s exactly what I’m nervous about.” Krem sighed in exasperation. 

“You could kiss me,” Bull said, and Krem couldn’t do anything except laugh. 

“What the fuck!?” 

Bull grinned and sat up. “Just saying. If you wanted practice, I’m not gonna judge.” 

“You’d really do that?” Krem asked, and he wasn’t considering it, or at least, he was trying to convince himself he wasn’t considering it, but he couldn’t believe Bull was serious.

He shrugged. “Sure, why not? I’ve done it before,” Bull said. “You don’t have to, just thought I’d offer.” 

Krem thought about it so long he started to rationalize it, which was a dangerous place to be. Bull _had_ offered, and Krem _was_ in dire need of practice, and Bull was probably the only person he knew who wouldn’t judge him for it. He said, “yeah,” so quietly, he was barely sure whether it came from his own lips. 

“Yeah?” Just like Bull, to make sure. 

Krem nodded firmly. “Yeah.” He took a step closer to Bull, who was still sitting, which meant his head was lower than Krem’s. Weirdly, it was about the same distance Krem would be from Maryden when—if—they ever… Krem took a breath. It went in smooth, but came out shuddery. 

“You want me to…?” 

“Yes. Please.” 

Bull took Krem’s hands before he took his lips, and he was warm, definitely not a girl, but good. His hands were huge, practically engulfing Krem’s, and he rubbed his thumbs slowly across Krem’s wrists. It was enough of a distraction that Krem was almost surprised when he was kissed. Bull’s mouth was nice. As far as mouths went. Krem wondered if he wore lip balm or something, felt like his own lips were chapped by comparison. That was probably because Bull didn’t bite the hell out of his lips whenever he got nervous. 

When Bull tilted his head, and his stubble scraped across Krem’s chin. Krem wasn’t sure what to do, so he just kind of stood there, let Bull move against him. Bull pulled back a little, which made a kind of gross, wet noise, and then kissed him again, and this time, Bull’s lips were pursed over his bottom one. Krem tried to do the same thing back, so that his lips were more pushed against Bull, rather than just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing, and Bull kind of… hummed. 

Bull was still holding Krem’s hands, but they were kind of sweaty, so he slipped them out of Bull’s grasp so he could rest them on his shoulders, where he wouldn’t be able to tell how sweaty Krem was through his flannel. At least, Krem hoped he wouldn’t be able to tell. He wasn’t _that_ sweaty, right? 

Feeling more confident, Krem pulled away and then kissed Bull, harder than he had before. It was a little messier, and he bumped his nose into Bull’s cheek, but Bull seemed to like it, because he put one hand on the middle of Krem’s back. Krem liked that. It wasn’t the small of his back, like he was a _girl_ , and it felt nice. 

He was getting the hang of this. 

Except. Wait. Was that a tongue?

Yep. That was definitely a tongue on his lip. Krem pulled away, a little sudden, but Bull’s hand was still on his back, so it couldn’t have been that much of a faux pas. He was okay with kissing his roommate so he wouldn’t be freaking the fuck out on his date—he was not okay with his roommate’s tongue in his mouth. 

“Was that…? Was I good?” 

“Yeah,” Bull said, and his eyes looked a little unfocused, but maybe that was because he still had a pretty nasty black eye. “You’ll be fine. Wear the gray shirt, it makes your shoulders look bigger.” 

“Really?” Krem glanced at his closet. He was kind of skeptical of Bull’s fashion advice, considering the guy regularly wore galaxy print shorts. Bull looked dead serious, though, so he ended up wearing the gray shirt, along with the dark skinny jeans that he _knew_ made his ass look fantastic. 

He met Maryden outside the concert hall (she lived near enough to not have to take a bus). She had her hair down. He’d never seen it down, and it was longer than he thought it was. The thing she did with her makeup was pretty, too, even though he’d have no idea how the hell she got it that way. 

“I like your, um, face,” he said lamely. If the Maker ever felt like striking him down, that would have been a perfect time. 

Maryden didn’t seem to mind him being ridiculously awkward, and she just smiled and said she liked his face too. 

The concert was nice, so far as concerts went (not that Krem had been to the orchestra in recent memory), and he remembered to let her into the row of seats first and offer his jacket because the room was freezing. She held his hand during part of the concert, and he didn’t even get that sweaty, except for when he thought about how he’d been holding Bull’s hands earlier. 

After the concert, Maryden couldn’t stop gushing about the solo pieces and the string section, and Krem just listened happily, with no real idea what a crescendo was. They stood by the front door to the concert hall, an awkward foot of space between them, and Krem stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. 

“So… can I walk you home?” Krem asked. 

For a second, he thought she was going to say no, because who even _asked_ that, but she didn’t. She just shrugged and nodded. “I mean, I don’t live that far away, but I appreciate it.”

Side by side, he realized they were the same height, and he was kind of glad she hadn’t worn heels, because she’d be taller than him. They chatted more easily as they walked, stuff about classes (they were in World Civ together), how terrible the dining halls were on weekends, and the ups and downs of dorm life. Apparently, Maryden had suitemates who played loud music in the middle of the night. 

“My roommate is eight feet tall,” Krem said, and Maryden straight-up stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. 

“You’re kidding.” 

“He’s a Qunari, and I’m totally not! He makes me feel tiny, and I _already_ feel tiny.” 

Maryden laughed. “Wow, that’s crazy. I didn’t know we had any Qunari at our school.” 

“Well, if you ever see one wandering around with horns like this,” and here, he mimicked the jut of Bull’s horns, “that’s my roommate.” 

They reached Maryden’s dorm, and Krem wasn’t sure if he should kiss her on the doorstep. He fumbled mentally at the door, paused to let two older girls walk in, and finally decided to find his metaphorical balls and do it. 

He held her hands when he kissed her, like Bull had held his, and because he had his eyes closed, he kissed her on the corner of her mouth first, before readjusting his face. She took one of his hands and guided it to her waist, and wrapped her other arm around his shoulders. He was momentarily worried that this wasn’t really happening and he was spacing out and imagining it, but she was warm and soft under his hands, and the places where he touched her anchored him to reality. 

And reality was him kissing a girl. _Finally._

Her lips were even softer than Bull’s, and obviously, she didn’t have stubble, and her eyelashes were long enough that they brushed his cheek. Comparing her to Bull was… honestly, kind of weird, but when Krem pulled back, all he could see was her. His breath came out in a laugh. 

“I… that was nice,” he said. 

It might not have been the best thing to say, but she hummed like she agreed. “I’ll… well, I’d ask if you wanted to come in, but… I don’t know what my roommate thinks about having guys over.” 

“It’s fine!” It came out too high and too fast. “I’ll…” he cleared his throat, trying to get his voice back into the right register. “I’ll talk to you soon?” 

“Yeah. I’ll text you.” 

She signed into her dorm, and he walked back down the front steps and across the street to the bus stop. He smiled like some kind of idiot for the whole bus ride home. 

———

He was weirdly excited to tell Bull about his date. Bull would be happy for him, probably. He might think Krem was a little too pumped about a successful date, but Krem was too happy to be judged. 

“Bull, I didn’t even freak out,” Krem announced as he walked through the door, and it took him a minute to realize the room was empty. 

Oh. Bull must have gone out. Probably with Dalish and Skinner, or that one Tevinter dude with a mustache. Krem took his jacket off and set it on the back of his desk chair. A small part of him was disappointed that Bull wasn’t there. That was weird. Bull probably didn’t need to hear about his date with Maryden. 

He dressed in more comfortable clothes and stretched out on his bed with the book that he was supposed to be reading for class tomorrow. 

He tried to stay awake long enough for Bull to get back, but anything written by old, dead Ferelden guys was bound to make him fall asleep, and he passed out with the pages stuck to his cheek long before the Bull returned.


	3. The Frickening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krem gets sad about some stuff. Bull tries to get Krem laid. Bull... succeeds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got long AF. But this is where the sexing happens. This is the first time I've ever written smut about Krem so, uh, it's pretty brief.

Krem had a Saturday philosophy: laying around and doing absolutely nothing for 24 hours. Bull seemed to think Saturdays were for going out and constantly talking to people for the same amount of time. They’d found a mix of the two: Krem would go out with Bull at night, and Bull wouldn’t bring people over during the day, so most Saturday mornings, Bull was gone, off pestering other ‘Vints. 

Today, though, Bull was doing homework in their room and Krem was out. He was a psych major, which meant two things: that he was able to read people like ever so many textbooks, and that the day he stopped making Freud jokes, Krem would be both concerned and happy. In any case, Bull was stuck alone at his desk, working on some paper about patient confidentiality or something, and Krem was out with people. 

Apparently, Dalish needed _something_ to do, since Bull was busy and Skinner was at work. Krem asked her what Skinner did, and Dalish replied, “oh, she’s a butcher.” Krem was already scared of Skinner, but now, she wasn’t just an angry elf. She was an angry elf with _knives._

He and Dalish were at a little shopping center near the school. It was a nice day, and Krem was enjoying himself even though Dalish dragged him into a ton of tiny jewelry shops where people talked to her about natural-cut stones. He wanted to go back to the one store that had fifteen different kinds of popcorn. They had free samples. 

As they walked past yet another store with “Boutique” in the name, Krem noticed someone familiar standing by a lamppost with a tall, lanky guy. 

She had her hand in his, and for a minute, he thought there was _no way_ she could be Maryden. Because Maryden wouldn’t be holding that guy’s hand and leaning on his shoulder and laughing, and…

Shit, that _was_ her laugh. Krem momentarily considered the possibility of Maryden having an identical twin sister with the same laugh, until he remember she’d said she didn’t have siblings. 

“Why’re you staring at them, Krempuff?” Dalish asked. Maker, he hoped that dumb nickname wasn’t going to stick. 

“That’s Maryden. The girl I’ve been going out with,” he said. “And that’s… I don’t know who that guy is.”

“A brother?” 

“She doesn’t have one. And he’s _blonde.”_

Maryden kissed the guy on the cheek. Definitely not her brother. 

Dalish put her hand in the center of Krem’s back, such a soft, tiny presence. “Do you want to talk to her about it?” 

He did. But he couldn’t. “I’ll talk to her about it later,” he said. “I shouldn’t… make a scene.” 

“Oh, but you would make the best one,” Dalish said, and she leaned her chin on his shoulder. He kept watching Maryden and the guy, until Dalish hooked her elbow around his and pulled him away. “There’s no sense in watching if it’s just going to make you worry,” she said. 

They saw no more of Maryden and the guy, but Krem couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it made him forget to laugh at Dalish’s stupid jokes and to have an opinion when she asked him if she should buy something. 

“Give me your phone,” Dalish said suddenly. 

“What?”

“Your _phone,_ Krem! I want to text Maryden for you.” 

“Why would you text her for me?” 

“Because,” she said, stepping up so there were scarce inches between them. She could be convincing up-close. “I know that if I don’t, you’re going to mope around and not text her and just hope things magically work out. And I’m not a mage, but magic doesn’t work that way.” 

Krem handed the phone over. 

Dalish tapped away for a few minutes, and didn’t let Krem see what she was typing, even when he tried to look over her shoulder. When she finally handed it back, it was with a, “here you go. You’re meeting her at the plaza outside the library at eight. I’ll go with you, if you want?” 

“No, it’s fine. Thank you,” he said, even though he was pretty sure this wasn’t the kind of thing he should thank her for. 

Dalish just shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I just thought, what would Skinner do if I was having a problem like this? And then I did that!” 

Of course she did. “How do you know Skinner?” 

“Oh, Bull introduced us last year,” Dalish said. Krem liked to watch her talk; she spoke with her hands and moved in this kind of strange, fluid way that wasn’t extravagant, and looked comfortable despite the fact that it would be awkward on anyone who wasn’t her. She continued to describe how she became friends with Skinner, and throughout the conversation, Krem tried to figure out whether or not they were a couple. 

It was still up in the air by the end. 

“I should be going to meet Maryden,” he said when the sky started to go pink and orange. 

Skinner checked her watch. She was one of the only people he knew who still wore a wristwatch, and he’d never seen her without it. “Yeah, it’s about time for that, isn’t it?” she said, like he wasn’t internally panicking. 

“What… do I say?” 

“Say, ‘who’s that guy you were hanging out with today?’,” Skinner suggested. 

“I can’t say _that!”_ Krem was already walking in the direction of the library, and even though he told Dalish she didn’t need to come with her, he let her follow. When he reached the patio, Maryden wasn’t there yet. That made sense: it was only 7:45. “You should go. Before she gets here,” he said to Dalish. 

“Are you sure? I didn’t say anything about not having another person with you,” she said. Krem still hadn’t read Dalish’s text to Maryden. He didn’t much want to. He thought he’d feel sick if he looked at her name on his phone screen. 

“Yeah. I don’t… ugh. I’ll see you later?” 

She nodded. “I’ll be in my room.” He’d never been to her room. Bull would know where it was, though. He watched Dalish disappear, walking slowly, like she had nowhere to be. Dalish always walked like that. 

Krem fiddled with his phone while he waited, and for a strange moment, he considered texting Bull. Bull would have advice (whether or not it was _good_ advice was… well, difficult to say). He decided not to, and ended up just staring at his phone screen, pretending like he was doing something, for about five minutes. 

When Maryden showed up, he almost dropped his phone. 

———

Krem supposed it could have been worse. Maryden could have brought the other guy she was seeing with her, or told Krem she was never interested in him in the first place. But Maker, it had been pretty bad. Enough that he was laying on the futon, wrapped up in blankets (with the AC cranked up so he actually could wrap himself in blankets), listening to sad music on his laptop’s terrible speakers instead of his headphones. When things were bad enough that he forgot the basic rules of laptop etiquette, he knew he was in trouble. Thankfully, Bull had either finished his Psych paper, or he was taking a break, because he wasn’t home. 

The lights were off except for the one over the mirror for mood lighting, but it didn’t really feel like mood lighting, because the only mood fluorescents got him in was “turn that light off.” 

He wasn’t crying anymore, which was good, because he hadn’t known why he was crying in the first place. Maybe because he finally thought something was going somewhere with someone, and had realized that it had been not going at all. 

Or, going a little, but at such a slow pace that it didn’t make much of a difference to her. 

He’d _kissed her_ , for crying out loud! It had been his first one, too! Well. No it hadn’t. But his first _real_ one. The first one that _mattered_. Sure, it maybe hadn’t been as good as with Bull, but Bull was… 

Bull was…

Kind of a slut, Krem thought, but that would be a rude thing to think about someone, so he stopped thinking that. And instead, he thought about how very single he was, and buried his face in a pillow with a groan. 

He barely registered the door opening, except to hope it wasn’t a big group of people. It wasn’t, just Bull, who was basically a big group of people on his own. 

“Krem? What are you doing? Are you sick?” 

He considered saying yes, if that would make Bull leave, but Bull was probably the kind of person who would do something ridiculous, like make him soup and lemon tea. “No,” he said, but didn’t move. 

“So… what? I thought you were hanging out with Dalish today,” Bull said.

“Yeah. I was… just sleeping,” he lied. 

“I know you don’t like to nap on the couch,” Bull said, “you told me you can’t fall asleep unless you’re in your own bed.” 

Damn. He had, hadn’t he? 

Krem peeked out from his blanket-cocoon to see Bull sitting on his bed, bent over so his horns wouldn’t hit the underside of Krem’s bed. “So. If you’re not sleeping, but you’re all balled up like that, you’re either sad, or you’re freaking out over something. But from your choice of music,” and he glanced at the laptop, “I’d say you’re sad.” Krem was about to protest that his music was _not_ sad, but then another acoustic Taylor Swift cover came on. So much for that. 

“Shit went down with Maryden,” he said. “You’d probably think I’m being stupid.” 

“I think no one’s really stupid, people just say that other people are,” Bull said. Way to get philosophical, Krem thought. “What happened with Maryden?”

“Me and Dalish saw her when we were out,” Krem said, “and she was with another guy, so I talked to her about it.” 

Bull’s eyebrows started to climb. “You actually talked to her, instead of pacing around and panicking?” 

“Well, Dalish texted her for me.” 

“Sounds about right,” Bull said, “so what happened?” 

“Apparently, she’s ‘dating around’,” Krem said, with air quotes for added emphasis. “And she doesn’t want to ‘get serious’ with anyone.” 

Bull shrugged. “Can’t fault her for that, but if you really like her, you could still hang out, and maybe when she does want to get serious…”

“But I thought we _were_ serious, that’s the thing!” Krem said, sitting up so he could flail properly. “I kissed her! Quite a bit, actually!” Krem mentally reminded himself that Bull had kissed Isabela quite a bit, and they seemed to be quite the opposite of serious. Especially considering he’d seen Isabela walking with her arm around some girl the other week. Bull didn’t seem to mind that. “I went to the fucking _orchestra_ with her!”

“Well,” Bull said, considering. “There’s a few things we can do about that. Wanna know what I would suggest?” 

“Sure,” Krem said. 

“I say we go out tonight.” 

“You say that every night.” 

“Yes. But tonight, we get you _laid.”_

The likelihood of that was so low, Krem almost started laughing. “Get me laid? Are you kidding?” 

“Do you want me to be kidding?”

“No. I think it might help. Abstractly. It’s not like I really… I mean. I don’t. _Do_ that. Not that I don’t want to! I just. Haven’t.”

“So what you’re telling me is that you’re a virgin,” Bull said. 

Krem retreated back into his blanket pile. “Yeah.” 

“So we get you laid but like, in a nice way,” Bull said. 

Krem was about to tell Bull that not every solution to a problem involved sex, but in this case… he thought it might have been a good idea. Sex or not, going out sounded good. Anything to keep him from doing his best impersonation of a burrito for longer. “Are you bringing friends?” 

“Of course I’m bringing friends. I’m already texting Rocky and Stitches,” Bull said. 

“Text Dalish and Skinner too,” Krem said.

Bull grinned. “On it.” 

———

Bull and Krem went out that night, and the next Friday, and by the time it had been a week since The Incident, as they were calling it, Krem was starting to believe it would close to impossible to “get himself laid.” Bull kept saying stuff like, “aww, next time it’ll work out, man, you’re hot.” Krem was so not hot. And so not good at talking to girls at parties. 

So Bull decided he wasn’t taking Krem to a party that Saturday. “A new environment,” Dalish said, like it all made sense. Krem just went along with it. He was cool with things, as long as Bull didn’t end up sexiling him for the third time. 

Krem had stayed in Dalish and Skinner’s room last time, and ended up spooning Dalish, which was kind of nice and made him a little bit glad he couldn’t get boners, because his brain’s _brilliant_ response seemed to be “GIRL.” 

Anything was better than ending up spending the night over at Rocky’s, because the guy snored. 

They ended up in a bar. Krem had never been in a bar before, and it wasn’t technically legal, but Bull said he knew the owner, and that Krem wouldn’t get carded. The bar was dimly lit, and he’d been shoved up front to a barstool because, “you’re not going to get any attention sitting in a corner, Krem!” Overall, it wasn’t what he’d expected. He thought Bull was the type to go to sports bars where the music was blaring and there were screens everywhere, but this place was… kind of hipster, honestly. There were no less than three globes on the high shelf behind the bar. The drink menu was confusing, and Krem let Stitches order for him, because Stitches was a booze wizard. 

Dalish and Skinner sat with Rocky and Stitches, which made them look a little like a pair of couples on a double date, and Bull and Krem like the unfortunate fifth (and sixth, he supposed) wheels that had been dragged along. Although, Krem supposed, they could have been a trio of gay couples. He was pretty sure Rocky and Stitches had banged at _least_ once, too. The jury was still out on the Dalish/Skinner thing. 

He felt like everyone was watching them. It happened a lot when he was out with Bull, because Bull took up space like no one else, especially once he struck up a loud conversation with the bartender, a grumpy-looking dwarf who reminded Krem a little bit of Rocky, but maybe it was just because he was a dwarf. 

Krem still wasn’t sure how Bull thought this evening was going to turn out, but he liked the drink Stitches ordered for him. It tasted alcoholic, but not too syrupy-sweet. Bull drank stuff that tasted exactly like cough syrup sometimes, which was disgusting no matter how drunk you wanted to get. Krem supposed it would take more alcohol to get Bull drunk, though. He was pretty big. 

After the first drink, Krem felt a little more relaxed. He was no longer staring at people forlornly, and he laughed at Bull’s stupid puns. Dalish bought him another drink, and he almost didn’t notice when Bull got up and then came back with his arm slung around a little, dark-haired girl’s shoulders.

“Oh, there you are!” Bull said, like Krem hadn’t been sitting there the whole time. “Trevelyan, this is the guy I wanted to introduce you to.” 

Krem didn't know how to talk to girls in bars. He supposed it was like talking to girls anywhere else, which he was terrible at, so that helped not at all. His conversation with Trevelyan had a lot of awkward pauses, one fumbling moment where he asked her if he could buy her a drink, then realized she already had a drink, and in the end, one of her friends walked in and she excused herself to go talk to the guy, who was tall and blond and had huge shoulders and a scar on his lip that was kind of cute. No wonder she’d rather talk to that guy. 

“You strike out, Krem-de-la-kreme?” 

“Don’t call me that,” Krem said. “And yes, I believe that was what that was.” 

“No, that,” Skinner chimed in, “was the most awkward failure of a conversation I’ve ever experienced.”

“Thanks, Skinner, that’s really nice of you to say,” Krem said, without realizing that he was probably offending the knifey elf. 

“You’ll get better,” Bull said, clapping Krem on the shoulder and almost sending him headlong into the bar. “Did you at least get a number?” 

“Was I supposed to?” 

“Yeah, idiot!” Skinner was not great at motivation. “Ask for her number, ask if she’d like to see your dorm room, ask if she wants to know what you look like naked, and stop doing whatever you just did!” 

Dalish nodded over her wineglass like Skinner’s suggestion was sage advice. “That’s what Skinner did to me, and it worked perfectly.” 

Oh, so they were a thing. At least, they’d had sex. Or Dalish was kidding. It was hard to tell. 

Bull bought him a drink, and it was something different form what Stitches had ordered him, but it wasn’t bad. Krem was beginning to trust Bull’s taste in alcohol more. Or maybe he was just drunk enough not to care. This gorgeous girl—woman, really—came and sat next to Bull. Was she flirting with him? She had her hand on his forearm, resting on the bare skin right before his rolled-up sleeve, and she kept smiling and looking down, before glancing back up at him. What was it about Bull that made women like him so much? Men, too, Krem supposed.

Maybe it was the size thing. Maybe girls liked having a guy who was bigger than them (and it kind of sucked that Krem was so short). Bull wasn’t just tall, though, he was all muscle-y and chiseled and _manly,_ like some kind of living definition of masculinity. Bull worked with _dragons_ during the summers, and sure, it was some kind of science preservation thing, but he had a scar on his chest that he liked to show off, because it was from a mother-fucking _dragon._ But it didn’t take longer than three minutes of talking to him to realize that he wasn’t some stereotypical meathead. He was smart, good at reading people, and he genuinely seemed to like everyone he talked to. Even Krem, the weird, awkward dude he lived with, who couldn’t talk to girls. 

Bull was hot, Krem decided, as he took another drink, and he could think that even if he wasn’t attracted to guys. And, even if that girl didn’t know it, he was good at kissing, and probably good at sex things. She’d probably figure it out soon enough. Bull seemed interested. He was doing that thing where he rubbed his chin with his thumb and then slid it against the outside of his lower lip, which kind of made him look pouty even if he was smiling. 

And he was laughing, but it wasn’t his normal laugh, the one that shook their entire room. It was the low rumble from deep in his chest, the one that made Krem get a little shifty (not squirmy, he didn’t _squirm)_ because he remembered Bull doing it on their first night at school, after he’d been grabbing Isabela’s ass. Bull was probably good at ass-grabbing, hypothetically. He had big hands. Big enough that one of them could fit over Krem’s whole face. He’d grabbed Krem’s face before to get him to shut up. And when Bull put his hand on Krem’s back, it nearly spanned the breadth of his shoulders. He was hit with a sudden recollection of Dalish saying “you know what they say about guys with big hands,” once. He turned red, but he could tell people it was because of the booze. 

The girl left, in the direction of the bathroom, but she was probably going to come back. 

Bull leaned back in his chair and slung an arm around Krem, who jumped at the unexpected contact. “You doing alright, buddy?” Bull asked. 

“Yeah,” Krem said. He was alright. He definitely hadn’t just been thinking about Bull grabbing his ass. Not even a little bit. Okay. Maybe a little bit. “I was just thinking.” 

“‘Bout what?” 

“Uh… something Dalish said,” Krem said, which was half-true, and those were the only kind of lies that Bull would let slip by. 

“Want to go back to the dorm?” Bull asked. 

“What, why? I thought we were going out? That’s normally an all-night event,” Krem said. Well, except last night, when campus security showed up at the party and an absolutely terrifying redheaded woman made them all go back to their dorms. 

“Yeah, but you looked uncomfortable about something,” Bull said. 

That would be the fact that he’d just imagined Bull grabbing his ass, but if he could get away with pretending it was the bar scene, he would. “I’m not used to this,” Krem said. 

Bull hummed, like that hadn’t really been what he was talking about, but he rubbed Krem’s shoulder with his thumb, digging in just enough to loosen the muscles there. It felt weirdly good. Krem had seen Bull give Dalish a massage before, but he hadn’t imagined he’d actually be this good at it. 

A group of about ten girls poured through the door and swarmed the bar. They looked like they were from a sorority, but not the big one that only accepted skinny, blonde girls. In the commotion, Bull leaned down to Krem, assumedly to say something about which one of the girls he was going to set Krem up with, but it was just, “do you want to go?” 

He was so close, if Krem sat up too fast, he’d bump his head on the underside of Bull’s horn. He could smell Bull’s cologne from here, and wanted to ask him what it was, because it was nice. Spicy, almost, and not douchebag-y at all. 

“Kind of. Not home, really,” and it he nearly bit his tongue when he caught himself calling their dorm room home. “I just… there’s a lot of people.” 

“I got it,” Bull said, and when he nodded, his chin brushed against Krem’s ear, and the scrape of his stubble sounded so loud this close. 

Bull sat back and announced to their friends, and the room in general, that they were going to get some air. He made his way out of the bar with Krem sticking a little too close to his back on the way out. 

The temperature dropped dramatically as soon as they left the bar, and Krem folded his arms and frowned at the weather in general. There was a little street at the front of the bar, but all the other stores on it were closed. A few people lingered in the street, smoking, and Bull walked a few doors down to a store that had a little recess where the door was. Krem barely wedged in there next to Bull, tucked in between his shoulder and the wall. If he moved, he’d be chest-to-chest with Bull, where he would have fit slightly better, but it would be weird. 

Anyway, it’d be more like chest-to-stomach, considering the height difference. 

“Too bad we left right when that sorority showed up,” Krem said. Anything to break the silence. Semi-silence. He could hear Bull breathing, and someone talking down the street. 

“Yeah,” Bull said, and laughed. 

“What about that girl you were talking to?” 

“Oh, I got her number,” Bull said, “she was heading out. Told her we’d talk later. She’s got a lot going on, I think.” 

Typical Bull. Ask him about flirting, and he starts talking about deep life experiences. It went the other way around, too. Once, Krem asked him how long he’d known a girl, and he replied with, “since that one mixer where I got really drunk and had a threesome with her and her boyfriend.” Then the conversation devolved into Bull talking about strap-ons, and Krem tried to forget that part. 

Key word being “tried.” 

He felt his phone in his pocket and thought about Maryden, and folded his arms again. He hadn’t spoken to her in the span of a week, and it felt like she’d dropped off the face of the world. Their Civ class had been especially awkward. “So. Guess tonight was kind of a fail.” 

“Nah,” Bull said, “got you distracted for a while, right?”

“For a while.” He wasn’t distracted anymore. He was still hung-up thinking about Maryden’s other guy friend… boyfriend? Suitor? Ugh, not suitor. What made her like him more than Krem? Could’ve been the whole having a penis thing, his brain supplied, and he decided not to think about that. His brain did not like following his decisions. 

“What’re you thinking about?” 

“Take a wild guess,” he sighed. 

“How you’re not distracted anymore and now you’re thinking about that girl, and probably having some kind of identity crisis because the guy she was hanging out with was more stereotypically manly than you?” 

Krem stared at him for a good half-minute before answering. “Well, I’d expected you to hit the nail on the head, but I didn’t expect you to hit it quite that hard.” 

“Slammed it right in there, did I?” 

“That’s what she said.” 

Bull laughed, too loud in the quiet street. “That’s what he said, too.” 

Krem shifted closer to Bull, definitely because of the cold and for no other reason. Bull caught the hint and put an arm around him. Krem tried not to think about how Bull smelled again. Thinking that more than once a night was probably not the most heterosexual thing. Then again, neither was kissing Bull, but Krem had done that, and he wouldn’t be all that opposed to doing it again. 

“Do you think you could distract me some more?” Krem asked. “I don’t… like. Thinking about this. Been doing too much of that lately.” 

“Sure, yeah,” Bull said. The words came out of him in an easy rumble. “You want to talk about other stuff? Or…” 

Krem wanted Bull to kiss him. It wasn’t a sudden decision either, or an urge that coursed through him like an electrical current, but a slow realization, memories and desires compiling on each other. His logic couldn’t deter him, either. Bull was the only person he knew who’d casually make out with him if he asked. And he was close to asking. He _could_ ask. 

He could also just yank Bull down by his horns and kiss him, which is what he did. Bull responded like he’d expected it. He put an arm around Krem’s back, not his waist, and held him tight, so he went up on his tiptoes easily. Bull tasted like that stupid grapefruit vodka he’d been drinking, which was shitty, but Krem didn’t care because he was being _kissed_. So what if it was in the middle of a near-deserted street, past midnight, by his huge-ass, definitely male Qunari roommate? He liked the scars on Bull’s lips, and the way Bull’s hand clenched the fabric of his shirt. 

There was a wild moment before they separated in which Krem tried to figure out how to get Bull from kissing him to grabbing his ass, but Bull pulled back before he could figure out how to maneuver that. He didn’t go far, though, Krem could still feel him breathing against his chest. 

“So. At the risk of repeating myself,” Bull said, “do you want to go back to our room?” 

The question was different this time. They weren’t just going back for Krem to change in the bathroom and get into bed as fast as humanly possible. They were going back because Bull wanted to take things further. Because both of them wanted to _do stuff._

“What is this?” he asked. He would have gestured between them if there was any space. 

“A distraction. Unless you want it to be something else.” 

Did he? Bull was a good friend, a good person to drag him to social events and make stupid puns at him when he was moping around. Bull didn’t care about his insecurities or make him feel like he was something different from other guys. But Krem would laugh his ass off if he tried to imagine a _date_ with Bull. Much as Krem wanted something more, Bull wasn’t the someone he wanted it with. 

“Yeah. Distraction’s good. Let’s go.” 

Bull smacked him on the ass before ducking out into the street and heading in the direction of their room.

“Fuck you!” 

“That’s the idea!” 

———

Krem fumbled so badly with the keys that Bull snatched them and unlocked their door himself. “I could’ve got that eventually,” Krem said. 

“I don’t want you eventually. I want you now.” 

And Maker, if that didn’t make him shiver a little. 

If Krem had thought about it, which he hadn’t, he would have imagined Bull seemed bigger close-up. It wasn’t true, though—with Bull inches away, Krem was struck by the fact that his arms fit around Bull’s shoulders easier than he thought they would. Sure, he was on his toes again, but Bull could encircle Krem’s body with his and still not feel scarily big. Krem wasn’t afraid of him, like he thought he’d be. 

Would have thought. 

If he’d thought about it.

Bull kissed him, short things with just enough pressure to make them stick. He set Krem back on the balls of his feet and took out his phone, scrolling through his playlists until he landed on one, which was…

“Is that called what I think it is?” 

He could have sworn that playlist title was “Ride the Bull,” which would not only mean that Bull made a whole playlist specifically for sex, but that its title was a pun. 

“Yeah,” Bull said, with a toothy grin. 

“I’m rethinking things, now,” Krem joked, “I don’t think I can sleep with a guy who calls his sex playlist that.” 

The music was good, though. Sensual. If music could be sensual. It made the back of his neck itch. 

“Aw, get over here,” Bull said, taking a seat on the futon, and Krem did, and he kissed Bull the way he had the first time, standing over him, but this time, he didn’t pull back when Bull’s mouth opened against his. Bull wasn’t holding his hands this time; his forefingers were threaded through the belt loops on Krem’s jeans. Which was kind of hot. Krem put his hands on Bull’s shoulders, but he let his thumb come up to trace the line of Bull’s jaw. 

“So,” Bull said, breathing the word into an inch of space between his lips and Krem’s, “we _are_ sleeping together, then?” 

“Yeah, we’re about to go take a nap,” Krem said. 

Bull chuckled. The sexy chuckle. Krem kind of wanted to sit on his lap. “Seriously, though. You tell me how far we’re going,” Bull said, leaning back on the futon and slipping his hands away from Krem. “You tell me you want to stop, I will. I won’t ask questions if you don’t want me to.” 

This was _not_ the time for conversations. Krem wanted to be kissed again, he wanted Bull’s hands back on him, he wanted… he wanted…

Well, he wanted an orgasm, in all honesty. 

He felt weird about masturbating when he knew Bull could walk into the room at any moment. He suspected that after this, he wouldn’t. He knew Bull wouldn’t care, could have said that for certain after knowing Bull for a day, but it was still… uncomfortable. He blamed it on sharing a room with his sister for the first sixteen years of his life. That fucks a guy up. 

“Krem. What’s going on in there?” 

The sound of his name brought him back. “I… I’m not sure how far I want to go.” What if he said he wanted to do stuff, and then decided it wasn’t as good as he’d thought it was? Could he stop in the middle? Was that rude? No one talked about sex rules. Did sex have rules? Social etiquette? 

“That’s okay,” Bull said. “I can just go, and you can tell me if you don’t like something.”

“So if I’m just like, hey, dude, that’s weird, you’ll stop?” Krem said stuff like that a lot. Too much for this to work. 

“Uh… you know what a safeword is?” 

Krem thought about whips immediately, and took a step back from Bull. “Wait, like BDSM stuff? I’m not. This isn’t. I don’t know if you thought that was my thing, but it’s _not.”_

“Dude, you’re the most vanilla guy I know,” Bull said. He smiled, but he wasn’t laughing at Krem’s minor freak-out. Plus, he didn’t say “vanilla” like it was a bad thing. “No, I’m just talking about words that you can use to tell me you want to slow down or stop if you don’t like something.” 

“Okay, that sounds… less weird.” Krem took a seat next to Bull, because he felt awkward just standing in the middle of the room. “So what do I say?” 

“Most people use colors.” 

“Colors?” 

“Unless you plan on yelling ‘green’ while we’re fucking, it works pretty well,” Bull said, and that got a laugh out of Krem. “It’s like a stoplight, you know? Green for go, yellow for slow down—“

“—or speed the fuck up and get through the yellow light before it turns red—“

“—yellow for slow down,” Bull repeated, with more emphasis, “red for stop. Cool?” 

Krem nodded. “Cool.” He paused, unsure of what to do next. The mood had gone weirdly serious there, and Krem could probably try to get it to go back to normal, but he’d end up doing something stupid to get it there. 

“So. Green?” Bull asked. 

“Yeah. Green. Right. Colors.” Could he do something other than say single words? Probably not. Bull’s sex music was still going, which made him feel a little calmer. It had a lot of violin going on. “Did I just totally ruin the mood?” 

Bull reached for him, resting a hand on Krem’s knee. “Nah. I mean, I’m still hard, so.” 

“Oh, I’m dealing with a romantic here, I see,” Krem said, sitting up and swinging a leg over so he could sit on top of Bull. Come to think of it, he was kind of straddling him. Well. That was… a thing that was happening. 

Bull kissed him, and it was like they hadn’t even stopped to talk. Bull had his hand on the back of Krem’s neck, rubbing his fingers through the buzzed hair on the back of his head, and Krem grabbed the straps of Bull’s ridiculous tank top (it read “Nugs, Not Drugs”) to pull him closer. Bull moaned, and Krem could feel it reverberating in his chest. Bull groped Krem’s ass with his free hand, and. Yep. That was just as good as he thought it would be. Better, even, because Krem couldn’t have imagined the way Bull followed the seams of his pocket with his thumb, or the way he pulled Krem closer by his hips, closer and down, until—

HOLY SHIT, THAT WAS A DICK. 

It wasn’t like Krem had forgotten about the whole Bull-having-one-of-those thing, it was just… okay, maybe he’d forgotten a little. Krem had grown up in a family of all sisters; the closest he’d ever been to a dick was standing next to that asshole bald elf. (He’d have to tell Bull that joke later. Bull would ruin it the way he always did, all, “ha! I get it! Because Solas is a dick!”)

Bull bent to kiss Krem’s neck, and his mouth was hot, and it was overall the sexiest thing that had ever happened to Krem. He rolled his hips down without thinking, and. Well. That was interesting. The angle was off, and he’d have to press harder if he wanted to feel much (or take his clothes off, that was an option), but the way Bull’s cock rubbed against him was… 

Nice. 

It must have been nice for Bull, too, because he moaned a little against Krem’s neck and gripped his thighs tighter. 

“I’m gonna need us to get naked soon,” Bull said, and Krem agreed. But. That would mean having to get off of Bull’s lap, which he didn’t want to do. Plus, it would mean taking his binder off, which he _really_ didn’t want to do. Bad idea to have sex with it on, though, probably. He wasn’t used to it enough for that. 

Krem kept kissing Bull until Bull stood, picked him up without breaking the kiss, and set Krem back down on the futon. “Want me to do a striptease?” Bull asked. The smirk said it was a joke, the fact that it was Bull meant he’d do it if Krem asked. 

“Just get naked, you dork,” Krem said. He stripped down to his underwear, and didn’t take his binder off just yet. He felt better that way. 

Bull, though. Bull gave exactly zero fucks about nudity, and he was completely naked before Krem could blink (not that he was doing a lot of blinking. It was mostly staring.), standing there completely unselfconsciously. Not that he had anything to be self-conscious about. Bull was… there were words to describe him, probably some damn good ones, too. Super flowery and poetic. But the only words Krem could think were _damn fine._ Which was stupid. And true. And Krem kind of wanted to touch Bull’s biceps. 

Krem reached for Bull and Bull kissed him, leaning over him, and Krem could feel Bull’s cock against his thigh. He’d thought they’d be slimier. Urgh. Krem prayed for better mental word choices. 

Bull fitted his thigh in between Krem’s legs, and the pressure was good, even better than it had been with his jeans on. Krem felt heat curling inside him, pressing on every inch of him. He kissed Bull’s collarbone, and Bull rocked against him, sending that heat skyrocketing. 

Yeah, sure, Krem had touched himself before, and he knew what this felt like, but it was so different when someone else was moving against him. It was like the difference between trying to tickle yourself, and someone else doing it. Except he was less likely to kick the other person in the face. 

Krem’s breaths had become short, gasping things, one part horniness and one part still wearing his fucking binder even though he was definitely exerting himself. Bull noticed. Of course Bull noticed. 

“Do you need to take that off?” 

Krem didn’t even pretend not to know what Bull was talking about. “Yeah. Probably. I don’t want to, though.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because. I’m. I don’t like it. How I look.” 

Bull bent and kissed him softly. It was the sweetest kiss he’d ever felt, and Krem may not have been a fan of sugary shit, but he didn’t mind it too much. “I like how you look,” Bull said. 

It took a minute for Krem to fumble out of his binder, and even more for them to get his boxers off, but eventually, he was more naked than he ever thought he’d be in front of his roommate. Bull, who had been displaced when Krem moved his legs to kick his boxers onto the floor, knelt in front of the futon and pulled Krem’s legs so they framed Bull’s shoulders. 

Krem was pretty sure he’d gone so red, his face would never be a normal color again. He could feel the heat burning in his ears, and he shoved a hand over his face so maybe, Bull wouldn’t be able to tell how hard he was blushing. He would _not_ be some blushing virgin. But he went redder than he thought possible when Bull said, “can I eat you out?” 

“Are you serious?” His voice came out a little squeaky. 

“So that’s a no?” 

“I… no.” 

“No, you don’t want me to, or no, it’s not a no?” Bull asked. 

“The second one,” Krem said. 

Bull’s hands smoothed along his thighs, thumbs pressing to the jut of his hips. “So I can?” 

“I thought people only did that out of obligation,” Krem said. He let his heel rest on Bull’s shoulder, though. 

Bull shook his head. “Not everyone. I like to. And I’m _real_ good at it.” 

“Sure you are.” He didn’t doubt it. Not when Bull pulled him closer, kissed his stomach, positioned his knees so they were over his shoulders. Every part of him _itched,_ and his hips kept shifting without him meaning to. 

“If the horns get in the way, just kick your legs over ‘em,” Bull said, and if _that_ didn’t turn him on, the way Bull was kissing his thigh did. His stubble was a little scratchy, but not in a bad way. Plus, Krem would just bitch at him tomorrow if he got beard burn on his thighs. 

Bull spread his thighs wider, and Krem had one last chance to feel embarrassed about himself before Bull tipped his head forward and licked him. 

Here’s the thing: Krem had never had someone else’s mouth on his cunt before, so he couldn’t say for sure whether or not Bull was really that good at giving head. All he knew was that as soon as Bull put his mouth on him, it took a lot to keep from screaming. Bull wouldn’t have cared if he did, but the dorm walls were thin and Krem would be embarrassed as fuck if anyone heard, and so he stuffed his first knuckle into his mouth to shut himself up. 

It was too good. In the back of his mind, Krem wanted to know if he could make someone else feel that good, but his thoughts were scattered by the feeling of Bull’s tongue against his clit. Even over the music, he could hear the noises Bull’s mouth made on him, and he was thankful for the background noise Bull’s stupid playlist provided, because if he was just hearing that and his own heavy breathing, he’d be drier than the Hissing Wastes. The way things were going, though, the odds of that were so unlikely. 

Bull sucked on his clit, and Krem let out a strangled, “Fuck!” which Bull took as a sign to do that again.

And again. 

Krem came with Bull’s mouth on him, his legs curled over Bull’s horns, and he didn’t yell that loud, which he counted as a great success. He must have impressed Bull with the string of curses he breathed, too, because when the fuzziness in his head dissipated, Bull was chuckling. “That was hot, Krem,” Bull said, and he kissed Krem’s neck sloppily. 

Bull’s body curled over Krem’s on the futon, and Krem came again with Bull’s hand moving against him, and his own fingers wrapped around Bull’s cock. Bull bent and kissed him, messy and open-mouthed, and Krem tried to respond, but probably just laid there like a dead fish. Apparently his fish impersonation was overwhelmingly sexy, though, because Bull came all over his thigh a few seconds later. 

“You good?” Bull asked him after. 

“Huh? Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” Krem said, and he didn’t sound _too_ breathless. 

“You wanna go again?” 

_”Fuck,_ I’d like to see you try.” 

“Would you?” Bull slipped his fingers against Krem’s cunt again, and he was so fucking over-sensitized that it almost _hurt._

“Yellow! That was not an invitation!” Krem yelped, and Bull moved his hand. 

“Sorry.” 

“No worries, dude. I just think I’m going to need to shower for like. Ever, now,” Krem said, wrinkling his nose at the come that was _still on him._ Gross. 

“You do that.” Bull yawned, and pulled his underwear back on. “I’ll shower after you.” 

Krem didn’t bother picking his clothes up and taking them with him, but he still left the shower with his towel around his waist. It was stupid, Bull had just seen _everything,_ but whatever. Bull must have known by now that Krem was a weird dude. 

“We’re still cool, right?” Krem asked later. He was on his bed, on his phone, and Bull was laying on the futon, reading. The futon where they’d just fucked. That one. You know. The futon. The one that he was not going to be able to handle Dalish and Skinner chilling on for the rest of the semester. 

“Yeah. Unless you’re not cool with something?” Bull stopped reading and looked up with him. 

“Nah, I’m good. I just don’t want it to get weird,” Krem said. 

“Trust me, dude, if it was going to get weird, it already has.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, hit me up on the Tumblr @ellieannes, or if you want to talk about Krem's man-parts (or Bull's, I don't care), @seldula for my NSFW blog.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr @ellieannes if you want to talk about dragons and Krem's hair. I also have a NSFW blog @seldula if you want to talk about exactly how big the Bull is.


End file.
